Elon Musk: Tesla Cars Will Know Where To Drive You

Tesla is known not only for creating electric vehicles with impressive ranges for one charge, but also for developing self-driving technology. While this technology currently isn’t in use by drivers, each vehicle is equipped with the necessary technology, “All Tesla vehicles produced in our factory, including Model 3, have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver,” says the company’s website.

But Tesla founder and CEO, Elon Musk, suggested over the weekend that the cars might be capable of more than that in the future. In a seemingly matter of fact tone he answered questions from his Twitter followers who inquired about the self-driving capabilities of the cars.

One Twitter user suggested that it would be ideal if they could just ask their car to take them somewhere. Musk replied to this tweet and said that the car wouldn’t even need to ask. Implying that not only could the car take its rider somewhere, it would know where they wanted to go as well.

How would it know though? Based on the driver's routine and schedule it would likely be able to guess where they'd be going during certain times of the day. Another user chimed in and explained that if a car owner was hopping in the car early in the morning, they were likely going to work. Musk responded, “Yeah, don’t exactly need to be Sherlock Holmes.”

Other users chimed in with their thoughts on the possible feature. Some said the car would likely have access to the passenger’s calendar which could make the destination prediction easy, others raised some concerns about it though. One pointed out that the car would need to be able to distinguish between the driver’s voice and those of passengers for voice commands.

The company’s website confirms that the vehicle will indeed be able to take passengers to their destinations based on their calendar events. “All you will need to do is get in and tell your car where to go. If you don’t say anything, your car will look at your calendar and take you there as the assumed destination,” it says. Plus, once passengers get where they’re going they’ll be able to hop out of their car and it will automatically find parking and park itself. When it’s time to leave passengers can then summon the vehicle to meet them to head to the next destination.

The implication of all of these technologies are dependent on regulations around self-driving technologies as well as software roll outs once those laws are introduced and the technology becomes legal.